The holy text of the NRA

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

The Second Amendment’s 27 words are the holiest of holy texts to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its supporters. “We get to have guns” is an absolute right, says the NRA.

Assault rifle
Photo by 82josh used under CCA-SA 3.0 Unported license.

Is the Second or any of the other Bill of Rights Amendments absolute? Not so in the case of the First Amendment–freedom of speech. Federal courts have said you can’t “falsely call fire in a theater.”

But gun advocates seem to think differently, i.e., any infringement begins the “slippery slope” to confiscation.

Of all the Amendments in the Bill Of Rights, only the Second has an introductory clause that states its purpose: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….”

In this Amendment, the words Militia, State, and Arms are capitalized, but “people” is not. Does this suggest an emphasis on what was deemed important, as writers of those days usually intended?

A number of federal courts have held that that the introductory clause is not itself  restrictive, yet it does stand alone in the Bill.

A recent article in the New York Times reported that the U.S. Constitution is no longer the model for new democracies around the globe. The reason? The Second Amendment.

Gun violence is still one of of the areas in which the U.S. leads the world. Another recent article in the Times noted that American buyers are keeping the Kalashnikov assault rifle factory in Russia going strong.

Is this how we want to be known?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Recovery from hate

Considering the level of violence in our world today, it’s easy to succumb to feelings of anxiety, apathy, depression, or hopelessness.

This is especially so because the military-industrial complex, war profiteers, hate-mongers, fear-promoters, bigots, NRA bosses, and various extremists have become increasingly successful in promoting those reactions.

When people are bombarded with messages instilling fear and anger, and promoting moral disengagement, they may choose violence and other extreme solutions in the effort to regain a sense of security.

The knee-jerk approach to a sense of threat is to retaliate, terrorize, scapegoat, and stereotype. These are not the only choices, however. It is simply not true that the only way to deal with “some people” is to get them before they get you.

Even people who have been deeply caught up in violence against others can convert from war to peace, hate to love, cruelty to compassion.

Visit, for example, the site for Life After Hate, an online magazine founded by “reformed white power skinheads” and their friends.

Read about the books available through the site—e.g., FourBears: The Myth of Forgiveness, described as “not a simple memoir,” but rather “a graphically illustrated guide from tortured child, to remorseless beast, to healing and change.”

Visit also the site for Against Violent Extremism (AVE). This group of former violent extremists and survivors of violent extremism work together to resist extremism, prevent the recruitment of “at risk” youths, and spread their anti-violence message.

To meet members of AVE and learn more about them and their goals, please watch the video above.

If former violent extremists can devote their lives to building peace, what can you do to help achieve this end?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Home to a safer land?

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

We have now passed the 2,000th U.S. fatality in Afghanistan, but that war is winding down and we are bringing the troops home to a safer environment.

Or so we are supposed to think.

Rifle range
Photo by Camp Minsi-BSA, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike Unported 3.0 license.

The U.S. today is seeing a huge spike in gun sales stoked by fear of mass shooters and the possibility of more restrictive gun laws. The NRA has never been more active.

I was an NRA member when I was young. Boy Scout camp offered target shooting and I was proud of the skills that earned me “Expert Rifleman” qualification, so I stayed with the NRA after scouting.

But the era that responded to urbanization and loss of outdoor skills by spawning the NRA–and, for that matter, the Boy Scouts–has long passed.

Now the NRA is more about our rights to carry concealed handguns and to stockpile military-style weapons than it is about target shooting and hunting. It’s all about power politics and gun laws.

One of the so-called “third rail” issues that politicians dare not address head-on is gun control. A federal law restricting assault rifles has lapsed, and background checks on would-be owners vary widely. This year neither presidential candidate will go near the issue except to reaffirm that they will do nothing.

In a recent interview a mother maintained that she was teaching her teenage son and daughter how to use pistols and was planning to buy them each one “so they wouldn’t have to go into a theater unarmed.”

Can you imagine the chaos in that Colorado theater if members of the audience had had pistols? And then a gunman, dressed like a police SWAT team member, had started shooting? And the larger-than-life screen and blaring soundtrack had been filled with shootings and the sounds of shooting? Who would fire at whom?

Yes, we are bringing troops home from two of our longest wars. But are they coming home to a safer land?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Twice exposed to nuclear radiation

By guest author Beth Balaban

More than 60 years ago, the first atomic weapons were dropped on Japan. Today about 200,000 Hibakusha–survivors of those attacks–live as reminders of the nuclear horror that devastated the country.

Fukushima radiation dose map
Image in public domain

Among the multitude of lives thrown into turmoil by the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a few Hibakusha were exposed to radiation for a second time.

Eighty-one-year-old Saichi Ouchi is one of only eight people in history to be twice exposed to such high levels of nuclear radiation. In 1945, a few days after the August 6 bombing of Hiroshima, military medic Saichi entered the city to tend to the injured and was himself exposed to high levels of radiation.

After the war ended, he returned to his hometown in the sparsely populated Yamakiya district of Kawamata to take over the family rice farm. He and his wife Tsugiko raised four children who brought them three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

After suffering three strokes over the last few years, Saichi remains sequestered at a nursing care facility in Iitate, Fukushima–a small village just 24 miles north of the Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Saichi’s eldest son, Hidekazu, has now taken on the responsibility of leading the family. Unable to carry on their generations-long tradition of farming due to the contamination of the land, Hidekazu works as a truck driver to provide for his parents and children.

As Japan slowly heals from a terrible catastrophe, the Ouchi family, too, must find a way to recover.

Over the next few weeks, I will be making a film that will follow the Ouchi family as they reassemble their lives, bringing to light a universal human experience– the importance of family–amid the rarest of misfortunes.

Beth Balaban
Co-director/Producer
Principle Pictures